The administrator running Portsmouth today moved to slash the club's overheads by making more than a quarter of the staff redundant. Eighty-five of 320 employees will lose their jobs but the administrator, Andrew Andronikou, said the chief executive, Peter Storrie, would remain on a salary of "under £500,000" until the club was sold.

Andronikou, who has been running the Premier League club for UHY Hacker Young since Portsmouth's latest owner, Balram Chainrai, put the club into administration days ago with debts of around £78m, said it was vital to cut overheads if the club is to survive. Chainrai has underwritten an overdraft facility of £15m for the administrator but that money will have to be repaid by any buyer. Andronikou said "no physical cash" had yet been drawn down.

Andronikou believes he can run the club until the end of the season on around half the £14m suggested by the insolvency specialist Vantis in its report for the high court. Other funding sources – Premier League parachute and television payments and the potential proceeds of player sales – are unlikely to be available until the end of the season, despite imminent efforts to bring them forward.

Storrie, who earned £1.23m in 2008, the year that Portsmouth won the FA Cup, has said he will resign once the sale process is complete.

"He is still chief executive today," said Andronikou. "He is still earning a wage and having spoken to Peter he would like it known he has taken a 40% cut in his basic wage. As regards to his basic wage, he will be earning significantly less than £500,000. I don't believe there will be any bonuses this year."

Andronikou said that cuts had been made "across the board" but in a "sympathetic" way. There was anger among some of those made redundant – including office staff, employees in the ticket office, assistants in the club shop, coaches and press officers – that they were being made to carry the can for the mistakes of former employers. None of the 49 members of the playing staff can be made redundant or be forced to take wage cuts, protected as they are by the "football creditors rule".

Mike Crawford, who has worked in the kit warehouse for five years, said: "I feel betrayed by the club, I feel let down. I feel there are a lot of people to be blamed for doing this to the club. What I have been on, players have been earning in three days."

Storrie was not at Fratton Park today and was said to be at Wembley finalising arrangements for the club's FA Cup semi-final.

Having met Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs yesterday , Andronikou said he was "not unduly concerned" and is confident that HMRC would today ratify the process by which the club was placed in administration. HMRC is owed around £15m by the club.